Entertainment
According to Barack Obama, These Are the Best Movies of 2025
15. Daddy’s Home 2 (2017) – $180,613,824
Nothing says “holiday profits” like putting two dads, two grandpas, and one very stressed-out family under the same roof and calling it a Christmas movie. The jokes in Daddy’s Home 2 are broad on purpose – snowball fights, bruised egos, and enough accidental humiliation to power a small town’s gossip economy. What really sells it, though, is how it weaponizes the season: forced togetherness, fake smiles, and that special December tradition of pretending everyone gets along for the photo. It’s not subtle, it’s not trying to be, and it absolutely understands that families will show up for familiar faces when the calendar hits peak festive chaos. The box office result makes sense: it’s easy, loud, and designed to be watched while someone argues about the thermostat. | © Gary Sanchez Productions
14. While You Were Sleeping (1995) – $182,057,016
Cozy doesn’t have to be complicated, and this one runs on pure comfort-movie fuel with a side of gentle ridiculousness. The whole setup of While You Were Sleeping is basically a romantic snow globe – Chicago winter, a mistaken identity spiral, and that warm, twinkly feeling of being absorbed into a family you didn’t exactly apply for. Sandra Bullock carries the charm, but the real reason it sticks is the tone: sweet without being syrupy, funny without trying too hard, and earnest in a way that feels rare now. It’s the kind of Christmas-adjacent hit that people rewatch because it’s soothing, not because it’s daring, and that rewatchability has always been a quiet box office superpower. Also: trains, scarves, and the softest possible emotional stakes – pure seasonal comfort. | © Hollywood Pictures
13. Red One (2024) – $184,894,014
A Christmas movie that shows up built like an action blockbuster is always going to spark debate, mostly among people who insist Santa should never share screen time with explosions. Red One leans into the “holiday event film” idea: big stars, big scale, and a premise that treats North Pole mythology like it’s part of a cinematic universe waiting to happen. The appeal is obvious – spectacle plus December branding is a reliable recipe for ticket sales – even if the tone is more adrenaline than cocoa. It’s the kind of movie that plays well when audiences want something seasonal without committing to sentimentality, like choosing a candy cane but insisting it has to come with a stunt sequence. If you’re measuring pure box office muscle, this one clearly didn’t come to whisper. | © Seven Bucks Productions
12. The Santa Clause (1994) – $190,539,357
Accidentally becoming Santa is a premise so clean it practically wraps itself in gift paper, and The Santa Clause milks that idea with impressive efficiency. Tim Allen’s regular-guy panic is the engine, but the movie’s real trick is how it balances comedy with just enough heartfelt sparkle to make the transformation feel oddly satisfying. It’s built for repeat viewing: familiar jokes, easy emotional beats, and a North Pole that’s whimsical without feeling too precious. The holiday imagery does a lot of the heavy lifting – snow, workshops, sleigh logic – and the result is a family Christmas film that became a dependable seasonal habit. A movie that turns Santa into a job you can accidentally inherit was always going to print money in December. | © Walt Disney Pictures
11. The Holiday (2006) – $205,850,134
Two people swapping houses to escape their messy lives is already a fantasy; adding twinkly holiday romance turns it into a full-on December daydream. The Holiday works because it commits to the comfort: pretty locations, soft lighting, feelings that arrive on schedule, and dialogue that knows when to be sincere and when to wink. Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz anchor the emotional whiplash, while the movie keeps everything glossy enough to feel like a warm blanket with good cheekbones. It’s not here to reinvent anything – it’s here to deliver peak rom-com holiday atmosphere, and that’s exactly what makes it a box office-friendly Christmas watch. Put it on and suddenly your living room feels like it has better décor and fewer problems. | © Columbia Pictures
10. Elf (2003) – $225,097,437
Sugar, sincerity, and the bold decision to treat Manhattan like the North Pole’s most confusing suburb – this is the whole Elf vibe in one breath. The comedy works because it plays Buddy’s innocence straight, letting the world look ridiculous around him instead of turning him into the joke. Somewhere between the department-store Santa chaos and the aggressively wholesome Christmas spirit, the film sneaks in a surprisingly sturdy father-son story. It’s loud, bright, and deliberately corny, yet it keeps landing because the warmth doesn’t feel like a product placement for feelings. Also, it’s basically a festive endurance test for anyone who “doesn’t like Christmas,” which makes the payoff sweeter when the movie wins them over anyway. If you’ve ever quoted it in December without realizing you did, congratulations – you’re part of the box office. | © New Line Cinema
9. Die Hard 2 (1990) – $240,031,274
Snow outside, chaos inside, and an airport that makes “holiday travel stress” look like a gentle suggestion – Die Hard 2 takes the season’s worst vibes and turns them into an action buffet. The film doubles down on the first movie’s formula: one stubborn guy, one impossibly escalating crisis, and a body count that keeps trying to ruin Christmas for everyone. The fun is how it refuses to be delicate about anything; it’s all fists, explosions, and that gritty, neon-lit tension that feels like an overbooked terminal at midnight. John McClane’s frustration is practically a secondary soundtrack, and the setting gives the movie a built-in pressure cooker. Is it subtle? Absolutely not. Is it strangely satisfying in the way big, blunt action can be? Completely. | © Gordon Company
8. Love Actually (2003) – $245,203,167
A dozen storylines, a mountain of feelings, and enough awkward sincerity to power a small city – Love Actually is basically a holiday playlist in movie form. It bounces between romance, heartbreak, friendship, and the kind of confession that should probably come with a therapist on standby, yet it keeps moving with an easy rhythm. The charm is in the variety: big gestures that make you melt, quieter moments that sting, and comedic beats that show up just in time to keep things from collapsing under their own sentimentality. It’s messy by design, because love is messy, and the film leans into that with a grin. You can roll your eyes at parts and still end up weirdly moved five minutes later – annoying, effective, and very rewatchable. | © Working Title Films
7. Batman Returns (1992) – $266,831,698
Gotham at Christmas shouldn’t feel like a nightmare mall display, yet Batman Returns makes snow look suspicious and holiday lights feel like a warning. The film is darker, stranger, and more stylized than you’d expect from a big superhero sequel, leaning into twisted fairy-tale energy instead of straightforward heroics. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman and Danny DeVito’s Penguin bring the kind of theatrical menace that turns the whole city into a circus – glamorous, grotesque, and somehow hypnotic. The mood is doing most of the heavy lifting: gothic architecture, sharp shadows, and that chilly sense that everyone is one bad day away from snapping. It’s not “cozy Christmas,” but it is unmistakably a Christmas movie in the way it weaponizes the season’s sparkle against you. | © Warner Bros.
6. The Polar Express (2004) – $315,249,768
Some holiday movies aim for laughs; The Polar Express aims for that wide-eyed, hush-falls-over-the-room kind of wonder, the feeling that something magical might happen if you just stay quiet long enough. The train journey is the hook, but the real engine is the film’s obsession with belief – what it means, how it slips, and how hard it can be to hold onto when you’re growing up. It’s visually ambitious, occasionally uncanny, and completely committed to its own dream logic, like a storybook that decided to move and never stop. The best moments aren’t the loud ones; they’re the gentle pauses, the drifting snow, the sense of distance between childhood certainty and adult doubt. It’s a nostalgic ride that knows exactly which emotional buttons to press – and it presses them with mittens on. | © Castle Rock Entertainment
5. A Christmas Carol (2009) – $325,286,646
Motion-capture ghosts were having a moment, and this version leaned all the way in – hard enough that the floorboards practically creak in surround sound. The story is the familiar Dickens ride: miser, haunting, regret, redemption, repeat every December like clockwork, but the visuals give it a slick, shadowy intensity that feels closer to a dark theme-park attraction than a cozy fireplace tale. Jim Carrey does double (and then some) duty, which adds to the fever-dream energy, while the set pieces keep stretching the morality play into something big and kinetic. Somewhere between the spectacle and the sincerity, A Christmas Carol still lands its central point: being rich and grumpy is exhausting, and kindness is cheaper. It’s a glossy, slightly spooky holiday watch that clearly wanted to be the loudest caroler on the street. | © Walt Disney Pictures
4. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) – $345,823,032
There’s no gentle way to say it: the makeup is doing Olympic-level work here, and the movie knows you came to stare. Whoville looks like a peppermint carnival built by someone who drinks espresso at bedtime, and the tone swings between sweet and mildly unhinged without ever pretending it’s subtle. Jim Carrey’s Grinch is all elastic annoyance and bitter theatrics, but the film also insists on giving him a bruised little heart under the sarcasm. The comedy is loud, the visuals are louder, and somehow it still manages to feel like a holiday staple rather than a novelty. Mention Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas at a family gathering and you’ll get immediate opinions, which is its own kind of seasonal magic. Love it or side-eye it, it’s memorable in a way that prints rewatch value. | © Universal Pictures
3. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) – $358,994,850
New York at Christmas already feels like sensory overload; now add a child with a credit card and a talent for improvised warfare. The sequel keeps the same basic recipe – wrong place, wrong adults, very right booby traps – but swaps suburban coziness for hotel lobbies, toy stores, and a city that never seems to run out of corners for trouble. The Wet Bandits returning is less “plot twist” and more “holiday appointment,” and the movie happily embraces the cartoonish escalation. What makes Home Alone 2: Lost in New York work is the balance between wish-fulfillment and mayhem: it lets the fantasy breathe, then immediately smacks it with slapstick consequences. It’s bigger, sillier, and sometimes blatantly implausible, yet it understands exactly why people keep coming back to it in December. | © 20th Century Fox
2. Home Alone (1990) – $476,684,675
It starts with a loud family, a rushed trip, and the kind of domestic chaos that feels almost documentary – right up until the burglars arrive and the house turns into a miniature battlefield. The brilliance isn’t just the traps; it’s the pacing, the little quiet beats, and how the movie makes a kid’s fear feel real before it starts treating paint cans like instruments. Home Alone has the rare holiday-movie trick of being funny, tense, and oddly tender without announcing any of those things with a speech. The soundtrack makes mischief feel grand, the comedy commits to physical pain like it’s an art form, and the emotional thread with the neighbor lands harder than it has any right to. It’s the film that made “Christmas = home defense” a seasonal subgenre, and it still plays like it invented the rules. | © 20th Century Fox
1. The Grinch (2018) – $540,826,718
Animated holiday movies tend to come in two flavors: sugary comfort or chaotic hyperactivity, and this one tries to keep a foot in both. The design is clean and colorful, the jokes are brisk, and the story moves like it knows attention spans are a modern resource worth protecting. This time the Grinch feels less like pure menace and more like a cranky introvert whose coping mechanism is sarcasm and staying home, which honestly explains half the internet. The Grinch also leans into the sweetness of community without getting too sentimental about it, letting the warmth arrive in small doses instead of a single syrupy flood. It’s glossy, efficient, and built to be rewatched – exactly the kind of December crowd-pleaser that turns holiday tradition into a box office machine. | © Illumination
